“Millions of American evangelicals are absolutely shocked by not just the presidential election, but by the entire avalanche of results that came in,” R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Ky., said in an interview. “It’s not that our message — we think abortion is wrong, we think same-sex marriage is wrong — didn’t get out. It did get out.

The evangelical share of the population is both declining and graying, studies show. Large churches like the Southern Baptist Convention and the Assemblies of God, which have provided an organizing base for the Christian right, are losing members.

“In the long run, this means that the Republican constituency is going to be shrinking on the religious end as well as the ethnic end,” said James L. Guth, a professor of political science at Furman University in Greenville, S.C.

***

This year Democrats’ arguments on values were heard. This was a “values” election as strident as the ones from culture wars past in which Christians marched against subsidies for Mapplethorpe, creationists vied for seats on Kansas school boards, and William Bennett demanded to know where the outrage was. What was different about this year’s culture war is that Republicans lost it…

Obama has made a lot of mistakes, but running the country as a business is not one of them. Like Bush before him, he is always stressing how America is the only place where membership in the nation derives not from race, ethnicity, or religion but from belief in an idea.

The bright side of that vision is a beautiful thing, but there is a dark side to it, too. If America is an idea, you can belong to it regardless of your ethnic background. But you cannot belong to it regardless of your beliefs. A tendency to lecture the American public on what they are supposed to believe has become a constant in the president’s oratory. “That’s who we are,” he said in his victory speech on Tuesday. He was talking about the need to help an 8-year-old girl with leukemia, a fairly uncontroversial proposition. But he uses this trope even when talking about the tiniest velleities, usually expanding it to “that’s not who we are as a people.” If there is one disturbing truth that Obama has always understood, it is that a winning American campaign is always about values, is never lukewarm, and is generally a bit scary-looking to foreigners and losers.

***

In my own state, where the Democrats ran the board on election night, the “Live Free or Die” license plates look very nice when you see them all lined up in the parking lot of the Social Security office. But, in their view of the state and its largesse, there’s nothing very exceptional about Americans, except that they’re the last to get with the program. Barack Obama ran well to the left of Bill Clinton and John Kerry, and has been rewarded for it both by his party’s victory and by the reflex urgings of the usual GOP experts that the Republican party needs to “moderate” its brand.

I have no interest in the traditional straw clutching — oh, it was the weak candidate . . . hard to knock off an incumbent . . . next time we’ll have a better GOTV operation in Colorado . . . I’m always struck, if one chances to be with a GOP insider when a new poll rolls off the wire, that their first reaction is to query whether it’s of “likely” voters or merely “registered” voters. As the consultant class knows, registered voters skew more Democrat than likely voters, and polls of “all adults” skew more Democrat still. Hence the preoccupation with turnout models. In other words, if America had compulsory voting as Australia does, the Republicans would lose every time. In Oz, there’s no turnout model, because everyone turns out. The turnout-model obsession is an implicit acknowledgment of an awkward truth — that, outside the voting booth, the default setting of American society is ever more liberal and statist.

***

In future, our elections will be like those in Britain or New York. We will be presented with a choice between a statist liberal and an out-there uber-liberal. And with the uber-liberal enjoying the full backing of the media and Hollywood, it’ll by no means be an easy win for the ordinary Mike Bloomberg or David Cameron-style liberal, who will be portrayed as a heartless plutocrat if he happens to come from money, or as a hopeless rube if he happens to come from nowhere…

The school choice movement will be killed off as “draining resources from public education,” which really means it harms a core Democratic interest group, the teachers’ unions. The simple matter of requiring voters to supply I.D. will be forbidden, not because it doesn’t make sense, the voters don’t want it or because it’s unconstitutional, but because it harms Democratic party interests. The two parties will fall all over each other in their efforts to mollify illegal immigrants. The new health-care entitlement will become increasingly onerous and costly, with all discussion limited to how best to “save” it, until one day employers’ efforts to work around it cause a frustrated government to convert it to a full-on single-payer Socialist scheme.

I didn’t expect this would ever happen to my country, and certainly not so fast, but we are now a decadent European social welfare state, sure to be accompanied by European levels of economic stagnation, taxation, welfare rolls, unemployment and perpetually misallocated resources such as subsidies to favored companies. Military irrelevance will soon follow as the staggering costs of the cradle-to-grave socialist state grow exponentially. Iran will soon have nuclear capability, to be followed in short order by its Middle Eastern neighbors, folllowed shortly by widespread proliferation of nuclear arms to terrorist groups.

***

If we are to lose America as it has been, could we not ask that it be lost to something better than this? Our president, a Narcissus masquerading as a Demosthenes, makes big speeches packed full of little ideas, and he is applauded wildly for it. His, says Marco Rubio, “are tired and old big-government ideas. Ideas that people come to America to get away from. Ideas that threaten to make America more like the rest of the world, instead of helping the world become more like America.” I will vouch for the verity of these words. I have watched how these sorry ideas play out in the real world, and it is not pretty: They make people’s lives worse, and yet simultaneously convince them that any reform will kill them — a fatal combination. Americans should avoid this path sedulously, for that way lies decline…

And yet, he has now won twice. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to elect such a man once may be regarded as a misfortune, but to elect him twice looks like carelessness. (Or, rather, criminal negligence.) This year, certainly, was not the perfect storm of 2008. Then, novelty and redemption played a role; this time, an insipid bore ran on an openly statist platform and won the day in a country that is supposed to be “center right.” Maybe it no longer is. In 1980, when faced with a set of policies that demonstrably hadn’t worked and a president who wanted to take America leftward, America chose a different path; in 2012, it doubled down. That says a lot about a people. The central problem, then, is not that Obama will be president for the next few years, but that the American people — knowing him — chose to reelect him. Even if this is put down to a failure of Romney’s turnout operation or Hurricane Sandy or Obama’s brilliant targeting, it does not say much for their commitment to classical liberalism that a significant group of Americans stayed away from the fight because they didn’t like Mitt Romney. That this was not a clear-cut repudiation of the president should sound the alarm.

The West was already headed for demographic-economic Armageddon. Even a Romney victory wouldn’t have changed that. The real test will be what happens when the crisis truly hits, sometime in the next decade. Fighting for conservative/classically-liberal solutions until that moment will make all the difference in how America weathers the storm. The Western welfare state as currently constituted cannot survive. It will shortly move from inevitable to impossible.

***

Thinking about the present day, if conservatives are right and what Walter Russell Mead has called the “blue state model” is indeed collapsing, then the GOP might not be that far away from another moment. At the least, the fact that it did not come in 2012 does not mean it is not coming.

And conservatives should be ready for it. For starters, they should ignore the triumphalists on the left espousing a permanent shift leftward. Nonsense! Yes, conservatives must do a better job of reaching out to Hispanics, but some perspective is necessary. The incumbent president is set to take in millions of fewer votes than he won in 2008. He limped across the finish line by dint of vicious demagoguery, which lowered turnout among white voters who have voted Republican in the past. Put simply, the GOP is still very much in this ballgame.

***

Now we need a majority in Congress to listen – and they should start by making sure taxes don’t go up on the 98% of Americans making under $250,000 a year starting January 1. This is something we all agree on. Even as we negotiate a broader deficit reduction package, Congress should extend middle-class tax cuts right now. It’s a step that would give millions of families and 97% of small businesses the peace of mind that will lead to new jobs and faster growth. There’s no reason to wait.

We know there will be differences and disagreements in the months to come. That’s part of what makes our political system work. But on Tuesday, you said loud and clear that you won’t tolerate dysfunction, or politicians who see compromise as a dirty word.

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On the election: these are my thoughts that the perspective of the Winter of 1776–1777 offers us on fortitude, perseverance, and faith.

This is from several months ago:

“…the acts and choices of ordinary people…”

This is from yesterday.

The American Crisis: November 2012

INC on November 11, 2012 at 12:20 AM

This great revival grew from defeat, not from victory. The awakening was a response to a disaster. Doctor Benjamin Rush, who had a major role in the event, believed that this was the way a free republic would always work, and the American republic in particular. He thought it was a national habit of the American people (maybe all free people) not to deal with a difficult problem until it was nearly impossible. “Our republics cannot exist long in prosperity,” Rush wrote “We require adversity and appear to possess most of the republican spirit when most depressed.”1

I remember one late night during the primaries you posted a ton of stuff about this period and you had me in tears, but this is one of the quotes that stuck with me. Thanks for repeating it!

now this makes sense…large cities have always had patronage machines…and i would guess that most people that go to cities are from small towns (at least somewhere in their lineage)

cities represent ambition, money, fun, excitment, power etc. (think brian williams) these people’s whole world view comes from their experience in hating the small towns..and loving the glory of nyc, dc, etc. And they demand services…transportation, etc.

they don’t want to be left alone…they could have done that in that wretched small town they came from

r keller on November 11, 2012 at 2:22 AM

Once upon a time, but not for generations. Most influx into cities is from other countries (more employment; some exceptions, as many Vietnamese and !Hmong settled in the country to farm). Rural areas are sending people into the cities, but they are not the largest component of the urban population.
So (as I noted above), we have generational ignorance about American tradition allied to the natural affinity of urbanites for government assistance and control.

Unfortunate that the democrat message is brainwashed into kids in public schools. Unfortunate that 90%+ of the media hammers democrat talking points.

It’s an uphill battle, and I’m not convinced it’s winnable.

(My eighteen-year-old niece, who did not vote, told my sister that she and her friends were worried that Romney would win and, “overturn Roe v. Wade.” She really is a very smart girl. I was tempted to tell my sister (who voted for Romeny) that she failed to educate her daughter, but passed.)

Rush obviously did that as a tongue-in-cheek take on everyone in the GOP – and alleged conservatives – who are starting to pander to Hispanics. But you see, after the Left crucified him for his truthful remark at Sandra Fluke, no one can take a freaking joke.

Doesn’t matter if it’s a joke or not, bottom line it’s just more ammo for the media and Dems to crucify the right, and it’s not helping our image. And the problem is Rush is such a public figure anything he says becomes magnified and reflects poorly on us.

When you’re trying to persuade other people to your side you need to treat them with the utmost respect, you don’t go around making sarcastic jokes and expect them to “get” it.

(My eighteen-year-old niece, who did not vote, told my sister that she and her friends were worried that Romney would win and, “overturn Roe v. Wade.” She really is a very smart girl. I was tempted to tell my sister (who voted for Romeny) that she failed to educate her daughter, but passed.)

Folks who don’t seek the truth are inevitably spoon-fed lies.

RedCrow on November 11, 2012 at 3:00 AM

…talked with kids going to MSU AND U of M.
The girls thought Republicans would take the “Availibility of Birth Control away”…a majority of them thought this! These are not stupid kids…they got a different message!

I think that the GOP on Capitol Hill ought to have press conferences the day before any vote in the HoR.

Boehner, or whoever, ought to say, “HR Bill #XXXX will be bad for America. It will cause X, Y, and Z. We republicans are against it. But we have assigned Representatives Q, R, S, T, U,…, and V to vote for the bill. It’s what the American people said they wanted. It’s legislation that President Obama wants, as do his fellow democrats. To repeat, we are AGAINST this bill. It will be bad for America and Americans.”

And, just assign different Reps for every bill. Give Obama and the democrats free reign…on EVERYTHING. Just make sure to scream from the rooftops that it’s wrong.

When you’re trying to persuade other people to your side you need to treat them with the utmost respect, you don’t go around making sarcastic jokes and expect them to “get” it.

tkyang99 on November 11, 2012 at 3:07 AM

So we know that the Jon Stewart’s of the world are not trying to persuade conservatives to vote Democratic?
(I agree with you, of course; you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, as my old auntie would say.)

Okay, blaming the GOTV drive, or the candidate, or whatever, strikes me as under reacting or blaming the wrong thing.

However, a lot of the reactions in quotes of the day here, ARE over reactions.

I’m gonna be frank, anybody that did NOT see that using social conservatism to win elections would some day come to an end, was blind. This isn’t to say that social conservatism is dead, anymore than religion is dead, but social conservatism is now an auxiliary to the conservative platform, NOT the core of the message.

Specifically, the issue of abortion DOES belong in the platform, because it is an area where secular concerns and moral concerns meet. Everywhere other issue the government deals with is either fiscal, or deal with size of government and the general level of freedom. As important as these things are, they aren’t spiritual issues.

I guess what I’m trying to say, is that the party must and has always need to sell itself on the core issues, not the sideshows.

As for comparing America to Europe, thats a bit of a stretch. The problem with Europe is that, most of the continent has never really had experiences with good government. While the philosophy of John Locke originated in Britain, it was never really fully implemented until the founding of America.

We as a nation, have a foundation of freedom and liberty to look back upon as an example. The same cannot be said for much of Europe.

For that matter, as I mentioned else where. Our issues repeatedly poll as having very high levels of support. Fiscal discipline, proper size of government, economic and personal freedom, strong national defense. Time after time after time, when Americans are polled they demonstrate that they agree more with US than with the democrats.

We lose, because we keep elevating clowns, we lose because we put ugly candidates like Akin where the media can easily find them. We lose because we step into wedge issues. We lose because we preach to the choir instead of recruiting people to our cause.

We lose, because we get a big fat F is campaigning!

So no, don’t despair. Buckle down, figure out what it is you’re doing wrong, go out, stay on message, and frigging win already!

I know we can do it, we just have to, I dunno, not be idiots about the whole thing.

I have mixed feelings on the issue. On one hand, I’d frigging love to just take the issue off the table. It’s been used as a wedge issue for well over a decade, and makes it extremely difficult to make headway with Hispanic voters.

On the other hand, it seems impractical to say that you’re going to take millions of people and just grant them citizenship all at once. For starters, it’d cause the unemployment rate to shoot up overnight, it’d increase the cost of many government programs dramatically, and it’d be huge struggle JUST to get all these individuals documented.

This is in addition to the sudden influx of presumably democratic leaning voters. I’d ignore that if I were convinced it was entirely the responsible thing to do otherwise, but I’m not.

Like I said, I’m torn. I want the wedge issue gone, and with sixty percent of Americans supposedly supporting a path to citizenship it’s hard to picture a scenario where some form of amnesty doesn’t happen.

If we can find a way to deal with these issues, and if we can couple this with securing the border, then I think it could work. Those, however, are two very VERY big ifs.

I think that blaming something like Romney’s get out the vote operation is crazy. I mean come on. The whole idea of conservatism is that people are supposed to be responsible for themselves. It is the Democrats who promise people everything from money to booze to get them to the vote.

One thing I noticed, people did not vote in the numbers they did last election. I think there is disillusionment out there and confusion. People hear so much conflicting information from so many sources that they honestly do not know what to think and so they just drop out of the process..wait for it to end.

Polls said that people were unhappy with the economy…and that they thought Romney would do better with the economy. The polls also said that Romney’s favorables were compatible with Obama’s. So we thought we had a shot at it..that was the reasonable thing to think. But reason had nothing to do with this. 8 out of 10 of the richest counties in the USA voted for Obama…along with single moms and inner city dwellers and minorities. These groups have nothing to do with each other. They are held together by a belief in the welfare state. That is all.

But who knows what will happen next? Elections in the US in recent years seem to be such a roller coaster. I am just wondering how long Obama can go on blaming Republicans?

couple of examples: Evidence of massive Obama voter fraud in Colorado! Ten counties show 104% to 140% turnout!
Crooked Politics: Obama Lost in Every State With Photo ID Law
Philly Polling Stations Where GOP Inspectors Were Kicked Out Had 90% Voter Turnout, 99% Voted For Obama…
Photo of Ethiopians brought to Ohio voting stations by busload, 95% of whom did not speak English, and told to vote for Obama, straight Dem ticket
Pundit Press: What Luck! Obama Won Dozens of Cleveland Districts with 100% of the Vote
Why the Polls are Wrong: Electorate is R+6
Vote fraud alert: One out of five registered Ohio voters is bogus
52 Democrats arrested for VOTER FRAUD so far
Vote Fraud Expert: Romney Votes Not Counted in Key States

If we can find a way to deal with these issues, and if we can couple this with securing the border, then I think it could work. Those, however, are two very VERY big ifs.

WolvenOne on November 11, 2012 at 4:57 AM

I think you are right. When Bush ran in 2004 he got something like 44% of the hispanic vote. If Romney could have done that, Obama would have lost that election.

The debate itself hurts the GOP because many hispanics do not think it is about the rule of law, they think that it is about them and their race and their culture. And the truth is the tenor of the debate a few years ago made it easy for the left to demagogue the issue. The right thought they won a victory when they killed immigration reform, but I think it was a Phyrric victory at best.

On the other hand, it seems impractical to say that you’re going to take millions of people and just grant them citizenship all at once. For starters, it’d cause the unemployment rate to shoot up overnight, it’d increase the cost of many government programs dramatically, and it’d be huge struggle JUST to get all these individuals documented.
This is in addition to the sudden influx of presumably democratic leaning voters. I’d ignore that if I were convinced it was entirely the responsible thing to do otherwise, but I’m not.

WolvenOne on November 11, 2012 at 4:57 AM

I agree. Supporting amnesty would win Republicans few Hispanic voters. Heather McDonald explains why Hispanic voters in the US are more likely to support Democrats, and the most of the reasons have nothing to do with amnesty.

Supporting border enforcement and opposing illegal alien amnesty is the right thing to do out of principle, and it is also the right thing to do politically.

On the other hand, it seems impractical to say that you’re going to take millions of people and just grant them citizenship all at once. For starters, it’d cause the unemployment rate to shoot up overnight, it’d increase the cost of many government programs dramatically, and it’d be huge struggle JUST to get all these individuals documented.
This is in addition to the sudden influx of presumably democratic leaning voters. I’d ignore that if I were convinced it was entirely the responsible thing to do otherwise, but I’m not.

WolvenOne on November 11, 2012 at 4:57 AM

I agree. Supporting amnesty would win Republicans few Hispanic voters. Heather McDonald explains why Hispanic voters in the US are more likely to support Democrats, and the most of the reasons have nothing to do with amnesty.

Supporting border enforcement and opposing illegal alien amnesty is the right thing to do out of principle, and it is also the right thing to do politically.

And California is the wave of the future. A March 2011 poll by Moore Information found that Republican economic policies were a stronger turn-off for Hispanic voters in California than Republican positions on illegal immigration. Twenty-nine percent of Hispanic voters were suspicious of the Republican party on class-warfare grounds — “it favors only the rich”; “Republicans are selfish and out for themselves”; “Republicans don’t represent the average person”– compared with 7 percent who objected to Republican immigration stances.

I am not sure about amnesty myself, but I am also not sure about Heather MacDonald.

One thing I have noticed in the last few days…a lot of the conservative commentariat has been proved wrong about a lot of things.

I think that pursuing some sort of immigration reform that stresses reform and allows for legalization of some long term residents, but not necessarily citizenship might be the answer.

All I know is that before the right went hard on this issue a few years ago the Republicans did a lot better with hispanics than they do now. I think it is a mistake to think the two have nothing to do with each other.

I think you are right. When Bush ran in 2004 he got something like 44% of the hispanic vote. If Romney could have done that, Obama would have lost that election.

The debate itself hurts the GOP because many hispanics do not think it is about the rule of law, they think that it is about them and their race and their culture. And the truth is the tenor of the debate a few years ago made it easy for the left to demagogue the issue. The right thought they won a victory when they killed immigration reform, but I think it was a Phyrric victory at best.

Terrye on November 11, 2012 at 5:23 AM

Dukakis got around 70% of the Hispanic vote even after Reagan signed an amnesty into law in ’84. Texas will be a blue state soon and there is nothing anyone can do about it because Pell grants, food stamps, free health care, SSI, child care assistance, and everything else I can imagine always wins the day.

And can you imagine what kind of SCOTUS justices we will have when the Democrats — the very, very far-left and radical Democrats — control the Senate and the White House for generations to come?

It really is over, Terrye. Vote for an amnesty all you want because the media will just give Democrats the credit while continuing the race card attacks against the GOP.

Where is the proof that GOP support of amnesty would suddenly convert large portions of the Hispanic vote to Republican? Are we sure that Bush’s moderately higher support among Hispanics was due solely to his support of amnesty? There’s plenty of evidence to explain why Hispanics support Democrats, and most of it has nothing to do with immigration. Even if Romney had won the same level of Hispanic support that Bush did in 2004, Romney still wouldn’t have come close to winning the election.

Border enforcement and opposition to illegal alien amnesty are positions that enjoy very wide support among most demographic categories.

I am not talking about voting for amnesty. I am saying that the Republicans should continue to push for better control of the border and more enforcement. However, I do think that they also need to stress reform of the immigration system itself and they need to find some compromise here that stops all the talk of self deportation. The Democrats love to demagogue this stuff, give them one less thing to use.

And yes, it might well be true that hispanics did not vote for Reagan…a lot of blue collar people did not vote for him either, but the truth is that the stink a few years ago about immigration reform cut way back on the number of hispanics who had started to vote Republican. There is no way you can look at the decline in the number of hispanic voters in the last two presidential election and not see that.

Or we just keep doing what we are doing and hope for a different outcome.

Where is the proof that GOP support of amnesty would suddenly convert large portions of the Hispanic vote to Republican? Are we sure that Bush’s moderately higher support among Hispanics was due solely to his support of amnesty? There’s plenty of evidence to explain why Hispanics support Democrats, and most of it has nothing to do with immigration. Even if Romney had won the same level of Hispanic support that Bush did in 2004, Romney still wouldn’t have come close to winning the election.

Border enforcement and opposition to illegal alien amnesty are positions that enjoy very wide support among most demographic categories.

bluegill on November 11, 2012 at 5:58 AM

I am not so sure about that. If Romney had won 17% more of the hispanic vote and Obama had won 17% less of the hispanic vote..things might have been very different. That is how many hispanics Republicans have lost since 2004..Bush got 44% and Romney got 27%. In 8 years.

And who says it has to be straight up amnesty? I do not support that myself. But if we do not try to slow down this decline the Democrats are going to do come up with something like straight up amnesty and we will not be able to stop that anymore than we could stop Obamacare.

Sometimes perception makes all the difference.

Barry Goldwater did not support Civil Rights legislation..on constitutional grounds. However, House Republicans helped push it through. when that debate was done, Republicans lost almost all of the support they had in the black community and they never got it back. Eisenhower was actually getting more than 40% of the black vote. Democrats still got most of that vote, but imagine how different things might be today if we got more than 40% of the black and hispanic vote.

Often times it is not what you say, but the way you say it. If you see what I mean.

Good grief. Let’s get the border secured first. Whatever happened to that goal? Amnesty would only encourage more illegal immigration in the future, and it would swell democrat voting ranks even higher. It is madness to even consider this. Illegal immigration is not only a huge financial burden to states, but it is also changing the culture of large portions of the country, and not for the better. Pass amnesty, watch the illegal immigration problem get much worse.

Passing amnesty would literally be the equivalent if national suicide. Don’t we have laws for a reason? What about all of the immigrants who have been waiting their turn and going to the process legally?

Good grief. Let’s get the border secured first. Whatever happened to that goal? Amnesty would only encourage more illegal immigration in the future, and it would swell democrat voting ranks even higher. It is madness to even consider this. Illegal immigration is not only a huge financial burden to states, but it is also changing the culture of large portions of the country, and not for the better. Pass amnesty, watch the illegal immigration problem get much worse.

Passing amnesty would literally be the equivalent if national suicide. Don’t we have laws for a reason? What about all of the immigrants who have been waiting their turn and going to the process legally?

bluegill on November 11, 2012 at 6:08 AM

Well, for one thing I think I said that we should push for better control of the border and for another I said I did not support straight up amnesty.

My point is that doing what we are doing is not only not working, the only thing is has accomplished is to cost us votes in the hispanic community. I am just saying we need to find some sort of compromise that takes this issue out of contention. As for the border, it will remain a challenge so long as Mexico is a basket case. I do not see that changing anytime soon.

What is the difference between a pathway to citizenship and straight up amnesty?

How can Republicans slow down the declining Hispanic support without supporting what you call straight up amnesty?

bluegill on November 11, 2012 at 6:15 AM

Well for one thing, making someone a legal resident is not the same thing as a pathway to citizenship…but even hardliners have always said that if people obeyed the rules and went to the back of the line they too could become citizens one day.

My point is that a lot of things effect immigration,including the economy. A slow economy can do more to slow down illegal immigration than any other single thing. It is not all about enforcement. The border is porous and it will remain so. We put up fences, they climb them…they tunnel under them. We have not had any kind of amnesty program since Reagan was president and they still came.

That is just a reality.

So we can spend a century trying to secure that border. We need to do a better job for sure, but it is not never going to be totally secure.

I am just saying that some sort of compromise, stressing reform of the immigration system as well as trying as best we can to police the border might be better than doing nothing and letting the Democrats push through something far more liberal once they have total control. And they will if this trend keeps up.

Thank you for your thorough responses. Well, as long as they can’t vote and can never vote unless they become citizens or get green card through the same process as anyone else, then it is something to consider. Also, not one bit of reform should be put into effect until we have confirmed that the border is almost totally secured. I am not okay with this “we will make our best effort to do what we can to maybe try to increase border security” component of the larger compromise. That sounds like nothing to me.

If people want to see some kind of immigration reform, then they better first get to work at securing the border. If they don’t, then oh well, no reform.

Well, for one thing I think I said that we should push for better control of the border and for another I said I did not support straight up amnesty.

Terrye on November 11, 2012 at 6:16 AM

They’ll never control the border. Illegal immigration — cheap labor, really — is a boon for business, a boon for Democrats, and an issue not to be broached by concerned Americans for fear of offending a growing chunk of the electorate or being deemed a racist. There is too much money and power involved with flooding our country with unskilled Third World people.

Oh, and any amnesty will turn *instantly* into an appeal for citizenship by the Democrat demagogues. And any rejection of citizenship will be deemed, you guessed it, offensive to Hispanics and racist.

The socialists won on this issue. Soon the USA will be one giant balkanized, bankrupt, and entitled California. We might as well start learning Mandarin since they will be running the show in short order.

Yes, they are stupid kids as most college kids are. Years of family values are rapidly overturned as leftist professors and other impressionable young people become “family” in the dormitories. Agreement with professors is rewarded, rewarded behavior is repeated behavior.

My point in sharing this with you is: I do not think the majority of Americans have really changed. Sure there is a large portion of society that wants the freebies but not as many as we think. I think the election was stolen, I think we are the majority! I think we have to hold on to hope.

I am officially freaked out. The “polls are skewed” denial is coalescing into a “the election was stolen” conspiracy theory. You all are starting to sound *alot* like disaffected Confederates during Reconstruction. You need to read up on the wild hysteria around “Negro rule”
among southern Democrats in the 1870s, a hysteria that spawned the foundation of the Knights of the White Camelia. Chill. Out. The election is over and your side did. not. win. In states where people had to show ID, and where they didn’t. In states where you had to show photo ID, Obama won! Obama also lost states without hard and fast voter ID requirements. You also have to prove that Obama had corrupted GOP controlled secretaries of state in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersay, Pennsylvania and Virginia. How, pray chance, did they corrupt the GOP to steal the election for the Democrats?

Now I’m about to blow your whole world up. The crux of this emerging, creepy and dangerous conspiracy theory is that “there were long lines and a lower turnout, HOW CAN THAT BE?!?!”

The answer is *profoundly* simple. There were less hours for early voting in a number of states where there were long lines. There were election workers checking ID in ways they never had before. In Florida tere was a 12 page ballot book. And none of these states and localities had devoted funds to expanding the number of polling places, there are often few state funds devoted to the issue. These are conditions produced by “election reforms” pursued by the Republicans, and most importantly, by the tea party. And now the fruits of your labor are your proof for a “conspiracy theory.” Unreal.

The idea that making them legal residents but never allowing them to vote is naive. The dems will say they have “skin in the game” and “pay taxes” (even if these are sales taxes) and voila..20 million new voters. It will be perceived as the only fair thing.

Hell, promise Hispanic voters you’ll give them Julia’s contraception money for their vote. Tell them they aren’t adequately being recruited by top tier universities in favor of other Democrat protected classes. Tell them that other Democrat protected classes are conspiring to take their share of the federal pie. Tell them more Hollywood studios should be Hispanic owned.

Create the Congressional Conservative Latino Caucus and let them in on the outrage that is Democrat policies towards Hispanics. Create a Hollywood Tax whose funds will be used to fund ESL classes.

Make promises, foment outrages, and make impossible demands of the Democrats in the name of fairness and social justice! Hey, it is what the Democrats do and, well, it works.

amnesty is a mistake and the Republicans will find their position doubly undermined by the desertion of those who oppose it and a strengthened Democratic party which will welcome the millions of new voters.

I think you are right. When Bush ran in 2004 he got something like 44% of the hispanic vote. If Romney could have done that, Obama would have lost that election.

Terrye

I must have missed something…did Bush pass amnesty? That would be no. By the way, that 44% is the most any Republican has ever gotten, and he got it ONCE. It’s so far outside the norm, it shouldn’t even be taken seriously, but instead viewed as the outlier it is. The next election John Mccain, Mr. Amnesty himself received 31% of the vote. You know what Bush 1 got 2 years later in the first election after Reagan’s amnesty? 31%. That’s 6 points less than Reagan got in 1980, and 3 points less than he got in 1984…both BEFORE he passed amnesty.

I’ve said it time and time again since the election….if amnesty were the solution, they’d already be voting for us. One president in the past 30 years has passed amnesty, and it was a REPUBLICAN president. Who did they vote for overwhelmingly the very next election and every one since? The DEMOCRAT candidate.

And I’ll say something else again….Democrats haven’t been pushing for this amnesty crap because they’re trying to help Republicans.

You folks better wake the hell up. Pass amnesty, and Republicans will likely never win another election, because 1. You will STILL lose the Hispanic vote by 70% or more, and 2. The base ain’t going to vote for you either.

The idea that making them legal residents but never allowing them to vote is naive. The dems will say they have “skin in the game” and “pay taxes” (even if these are sales taxes) and voila..20 million new voters. It will be perceived as the only fair thing.

clnurnberg

And republicans will say we have to let them vote because we’re losing the Hispanic vote, lol.

And I’ll say something else again….Democrats haven’t been pushing for this amnesty crap because they’re trying to help Republicans.
You folks better wake the hell up. Pass amnesty, and Republicans will likely never win another election, because 1. You will STILL lose the Hispanic vote by 70% or more, and 2. The base ain’t going to vote for you either.
xblade on November 11, 2012 at 6:54 AM

That bolded part is such an important point.

I am generally pretty forgiving when it comes to Republicans who feel the need to compromise. I understand that we can’t only have hardliners who agree with us all of the time. But if the GOP supports amnesty, I’m going straight up TrueCon third party or bust!! Well, I say that for effect, but all I mean is that I can certainly imagine an unbelievable feeling of betrayal among if Republican voters if the GOP caved on this issue.

“Millions of American evangelicals are absolutely shocked by not just the presidential election, but by the entire avalanche of results that came in,” R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Ky., said in an interview. “It’s not that our message — we think abortion is wrong, we think same-sex marriage is wrong — didn’t get out. It did get out.

I feast in the socon tears… you broke the GOP! and now that you dominate the GOP, you know that you will never win the country with GOP running on your platform.
what now socons? here is an advice, stop trying to impose your values on others through the political system. live your values and give example and if its is not enough, then there is always eschatology to give you comfort.

amnesty is a mistake and the Republicans will find their position doubly undermined by the desertion of those who oppose it and a strengthened Democratic party which will welcome the millions of new voters.

rob verdi on November 11, 2012 at 6:53 AM

the issue is long term vs short term. will we embrace amnesty and get a larger share of latino voters to the gop or will deny amnesty and keep losing high share of latino voters for at least one generation when their numbers keep rising.
GOP is boxed in! better do the right thing and give amnesty, and run rubio or jeb bush in 2016

I agree with “Ace” . . . give the Dems everything they want and let them insert the final building block in their socialist state. Then, after they have turned the country into a virtual wasteland, we can sort through the rubble and rebuild it into a new, prosperous capitalistic Republic.

I learned that you took a moderate republican and turned him into a severe pretzel that had no credibility when he went for the center again
if you think you need a “true conservative” you are wrong! the writing on the wall is that we lost the culture war and ideological war. and the demographic trends are on the dem side. and doubling down on “true conservatives” will just give us perpetual defeats from now on.
Its hard to accept but we need to be liberal light, and I suggest even that we pick up new flags like fighting corruption that will be a major issue as the dems dominate.
I know its hard to accept but we

My point in sharing this with you is: I do not think the majority of Americans have really changed. Sure there is a large portion of society that wants the freebies but not as many as we think. I think the election was stolen, I think we are the majority! I think we have to hold on to hope.

I am officially freaked out. The “polls are skewed” denial is coalescing into a “the election was stolen” conspiracy theory. You all are starting to sound *alot* like disaffected Confederates during Reconstruction. You need to read up on the wild hysteria around “Negr@ rule”
among southern Democrats in the 1870s, a hysteria that spawned the foundation of the Knights of the White Camelia. Chill. Out. The election is over and your side did. not. win. In states where people had to show ID, and where they didn’t. In states where you had to show photo ID, Obama won! Obama also lost states without hard and fast voter ID requirements. You also have to prove that Obama had corrupted GOP controlled secretaries of state in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersay, Pennsylvania and Virginia. How, pray chance, did they corrupt the GOP to steal the election for the Democrats?

Now I’m about to blow your whole world up. The crux of this emerging, creepy and dangerous conspiracy theory is that “there were long lines and a lower turnout, HOW CAN THAT BE?!?!”

The answer is *profoundly* simple. There were less hours for early voting in a number of states where there were long lines. There were election workers checking ID in ways they never had before. In Florida tere was a 12 page ballot book. And none of these states and localities had devoted funds to expanding the number of polling places, there are often few state funds devoted to the issue. These are conditions produced by “election reforms” pursued by the Republicans, and most importantly, by the tea party. And now the fruits of your labor are your proof for a “conspiracy theory.” Unreal.

You folks better wake the hell up. Pass amnesty, and Republicans will likely never win another election, because 1. You will STILL lose the Hispanic vote by 70% or more, and 2. The base ain’t going to vote for you either.
xblade on November 11, 2012 at 6:54 AM

Exactly, it’s not about amnesty, it’s about the free stuff. That’s what they want and that’s why they come here illegally. Same with the legal third world immigrants who went for Obama 75%. Reagan won in ’84 with 37% of the hispanic vote. Passes amnesty in ’86 and Bush 41 gets 30% in ’88. If my math is right, that’s a loss of 7%. Why? Because the now legal illegals voted Dem. As stated above, amnesty is the death knell for the GOP. Another reminder here, Romney lost because the white blue collar vote didn’t turn out for him.

We have not had any kind of amnesty program since Reagan was president and they still came.

That is just a reality.

Of course they did. If I could walk into a bank and take out all the cash I wanted without repercussions, I’d do the same thing. They came because the border was open and laws weren’t being enforced, and probably in part because they were hoping to get in line for the next amnesty. They just didn’t realize it would take 25 years.

My point is that a lot of things effect immigration,including the economy. A slow economy can do more to slow down illegal immigration than any other single thing. It is not all about enforcement.

So, we should kill the economy to slow illegal immigration?

The border is porous and it will remain so. We put up fences, they climb them…they tunnel under them.

That is just a reality.

So we can spend a century trying to secure that border. We need to do a better job for sure, but it is not never going to be totally secure.

In other words, what you’re really saying is sure, more border security would be cool and all, but when it comes right down to it, you’re pretty much ok with compromising on that too. You’d have to be of course. Wouldn’t want to give the dems a wedge issue or anything. If we secure the border, they might talk bad about Republicans and make the Hispanics not vote for us. Hey, maybe we should just BECOME democrats. Voila’, no more wedge issues, and we can all live happily ever after.

Had the hard line conservatives and hard line union Dems not poisoned the Bush-Kennedy bill several years ago this would be a dead issue. Under that plan the earliest anyone would have been made a citizen would have been 13 years after passage of the bill.
The self professed “true cons” made it a badge of honor to sabotage those efforts and have created the whirlwind we have reaped.

I am officially freaked out. The “polls are skewed” denial is coalescing into a “the election was stolen” conspiracy theory. You all are starting to sound *alot* like disaffected Confederates during Reconstruction. You need to read up on the wild hysteria around “Negr@ rule”

I feast in the socon tears… you broke the GOP! and now that you dominate the GOP, you know that you will never win the country with GOP running on your platform.

what now socons? here is an advice, stop trying to impose your values on others through the political system. live your values and give example and if its is not enough, then there is always eschatology to give you comfort.

nathor

So basically, only the left is allowed to impose their values. Plus, they get to make others pay for it. Gotcha.

Thanks for the advice, but I’ll pass. The last person on the planet who has a conservative’s best interests at heart is a liberal.

This battle may well come down to what kind of immigrant we assimilate.

Back in the day, immigrants came to America because they were oppressed in some way. But they were WILLING TO WORK for the chance to make something of themselves. Seeing the ills of living off gov’t largesse, they understood the value of individual freedom and hard work.

Is that why the 21st century immigrants come?

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying ALL immigrants are entitlement-seekers. But too many of them are. And it’s sinking our nation.

To fix the nation, we have to fix immigration. Yet now, neither party wants to touch it. Curtains, America–exit stage Left, of course.

Look. I was shell shocked too. I’ve had my moments of despair. But at some point you get the freak up off the floor, stop sucking your thumb and start making plans! Do something! Stop whining! Stop crying! Start working!

You don’t know hat to do? Get together with friends you can trust. Your TEA party. Form a prayer group! If you feel especially brave invite some local republican politicians. Have some food and cry on each others shoulders and then start brainstorming! It’s a start!

Zech. 4:10 “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the LORD rejoices to see the work begin, to see the plumb line in Zerubbabel’s hand.”

Don’t despise small beginnings! God loves it and can do a lot with a little!

Second… push your legislators to have House hearings on voter fraud! We need to get to bottom of this! We don’t know if Obama stole the election but there are enough accusations of fraud to investigate!

Support Allen West in his recount! Boehner has abandoned him! Why? Read what the local news and what est is reporting was done to him! If what is being reported is true it is massive fraud and it is being swept under the rug!

“And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up.” Gal. 6:9

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
― Abraham Lincoln

“My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure.”
― Abraham Lincoln

That’s rich from someone who got his azz on his shoulders because the people at Hot Air were insufficiently horrified(sympathetic) at his experience with very temporary power outage and sounds of high winds during Sandy.

That’s rich from someone who got his azz on his shoulders because the people at Hot Air were insufficiently horrified(sympathetic) at his experience with very temporary power outage and sounds of high winds during Sandy.

I remember the dean of the left, Keith Olbermann, spending hours after 2004 talking about provisional ballots and Diebold machines and how Rove stole the election in Ohio. I also remember all these allegations about 9/11 and how Bush actively sought to kill 3000 people coming out of the same quarters. So please don’t get all superior and mighty on us. M’kay.

People are a bit shocked that there is a slight majority of Americans that are swayed by the war on womenz and Big Bird and will actually vote on those “pressing” issues when the U.S. is on the verge of bankruptcy. In fact, as a 30 something single woman, I’m dismayed that the Obama administration thinks that the important thing in my life is my ability to have casual drunken hook-ups and that there is a large portion of my contemporaries who apparently hold those views. One way to deal with shock is to think on conspiracies theories. I prefer utter despair, but others create specific scenarios.

couple of examples: Evidence of massive Obama voter fraud in Colorado! Ten counties show 104% to 140% turnout!
Crooked Politics: Obama Lost in Every State With Photo ID Law
Philly Polling Stations Where GOP Inspectors Were Kicked Out Had 90% Voter Turnout, 99% Voted For Obama…
Photo of Ethiopians brought to Ohio voting stations by busload, 95% of whom did not speak English, and told to vote for Obama, straight Dem ticket
Pundit Press: What Luck! Obama Won Dozens of Cleveland Districts with 100% of the Vote
Why the Polls are Wrong: Electorate is R+6
Vote fraud alert: One out of five registered Ohio voters is bogus
52 Democrats arrested for VOTER FRAUD so far
Vote Fraud Expert: Romney Votes Not Counted in Key States

mrks on November 11, 2012 at 5:19 AM

I am officially freaked out. The “polls are skewed” denial is coalescing into a “the election was stolen” conspiracy theory. You all are starting to sound *alot* like disaffected Confederates during Reconstruction. You need to read up on the wild hysteria around “Negr@ rule”
among southern Democrats in the 1870s, a hysteria that spawned the foundation of the Knights of the White Camelia. Chill. Out. The election is over and your side did. not. win. In states where people had to show ID, and where they didn’t. In states where you had to show photo ID, Obama won! Obama also lost states without hard and fast voter ID requirements. You also have to prove that Obama had corrupted GOP controlled secretaries of state in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersay, Pennsylvania and Virginia. How, pray chance, did they corrupt the GOP to steal the election for the Democrats?

Now I’m about to blow your whole world up. The crux of this emerging, creepy and dangerous conspiracy theory is that “there were long lines and a lower turnout, HOW CAN THAT BE?!?!”

The answer is *profoundly* simple. There were less hours for early voting in a number of states where there were long lines. There were election workers checking ID in ways they never had before. In Florida tere was a 12 page ballot book. And none of these states and localities had devoted funds to expanding the number of polling places, there are often few state funds devoted to the issue. These are conditions produced by “election reforms” pursued by the Republicans, and most importantly, by the tea party. And now the fruits of your labor are your proof for a “conspiracy theory.” Unreal.

libfreeordie on November 11, 2012 at 7:46 AM

You’re officially freaked out that Obama won in precincts where there was 141% voter turnout?

So am I.

Precincts with 100% + turnout. Precincts with 99+% votes for Obama. Precincts where Republican poll watchers are locked out. Just a coincidence that Obama has long-standing ties to Acorn an organization with multiple convictions for voter registration fraud.

Rush covered the giving of amnesty on Friday. It didn’t gain the gop anything, in fact, they got fewer votes after Reagan signed the paper work and the border was never secured. The East Germans used to shoot people who tried to leave for the West. Now the dems give them food stamps after they get here.

I think we give too much deference to their former countries. I’m a little tired of it being a crime to be insensitive of the country that was bad enough to flee from but apparently needs to be glorified.

“Voting patterns of this last election give ample support to the notion of the divided country, and it is now virtually obligatory to bemoan polarization while calling for unity in our fragmented polis.

As obvious as our polarization seems, perhaps disunity is not the real problem; instead, perhaps we already have a unity, just of a barbaric sort rendering reasonable life and speech fragmentary, incoherent, and truncated.

Over fifty years ago, John Courtney Murray, perhaps the leading Catholic political theorist of the last century, wrote that it is quite impossible for a society to operate “without some spiritual bond of unity,” without “some concept of a doctrine that is sacred.” The question and problem facing us, Fr. Murray suggested, is “not whether we shall have a national unity—of course we shall! The only question is: what kind of unity and quality of unity shall we have? And on what will it be based, and what ends will it serve and pursue?” He continued, “American culture is not pluralistic. American culture is unitary. American culture is uniform, and it is tending always to become more and more unitary and uniform….

For Murray, belief in the power of a secular technological empire is a type of idiocy, taken in the original Greek meaning: “the ‘idiot’ meant, first of all, the private person, and then came to mean the man who does not possess the public philosophy, the man who is not master of the knowledge and the skills that underlie the life of the civilized city. The idiot, to the Greek, was just one stage removed from the barbarian.” The contemporary idiot is “the technological secularist who knows everything. He’s the man who knows everything about the organization of all the instruments and techniques of power that are available in the contemporary world and who, at the same time, understands nothing about the nature of man or about the nature of true civilization.”

Such technological idiocy will not be unsophisticated or without its skillful and educated practitioners, but their expertise will not include the things which matter most to our common and public life: “this technological order will hang, as it were, suspended over a moral confusion; and this moral confusion will itself be suspended over a spiritual vacuum.” Technology, whatever the claims made by our experts, specialists, and practitioners, cannot deliver civilization, for such an order provides no real purpose or vision of life, it is a void, a vacuum…

Spiritual vacuums are filled, for “society, like nature itself, abhors a vacuum and cannot tolerate it,” and since “traditional religion is outlawed as the public religion … what then remains to fill the vacuum that otherwise would result at the heart of society?” It is here that the second candidate steps forward to fill the lacuna left by technological society: “the candidate, of course, for this post of being the civil religion of American society has already presented himself. It is, of course, democracy conceived as a quasi-religious faith,” a “political mystique, the unclarified concept of freedom.”

Since technology cannot deliver human purpose but tends to sever us from the ancient traditions and communities, and since we cannot live entirely severed from meaning, we create a civil religion, “a substitute secular faith, that would undertake to take the place of the traditional religious faith that has historically given substance to the civilization that we call Western.” Moreover, for this new faith to capture our allegiance, “this set of democratic values is conceived to be transcendent to all the religious divisions that are unfortunately among us,” and there “must be outlawed all the traditional tenets of traditional religion.” Note, thus, how the new civil religion demands, and provides, a pale version of unity in demanding allegiance to freedom even as traditional religion is diminished and forced to bow to the newer gods….

John Paul II indicated something very similar in Evangelium Vitae: “freedom negates and destroys itself, and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others, when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with the truth, “when it strives “to emancipate itself from all forms of tradition and authority….” Oddly, the religion of freedom fosters both a deep alienation from others while encouraging also a mass conformity of individuals united in their quest for freedom, as John Paul II explains: “If the promotion of the self is understood in terms of absolute autonomy, people inevitably reach the point of rejecting one another…. Thus society becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but without any mutual bonds…. any reference to common values and to a truth absolutely binding on everyone is lost, and social life ventures on to the shifting sands of complete relativism.”

Note the perverse nature of the civil religion of freedom—it serves as the underlying spiritual capital by which a people are formed, and yet it forms a people united only in their mutual alienation from each other…”

Barbarism, in other words, threatens whenever rational standards of judgment fail, when “men cannot be locked together in argument,” for civilization itself is formed by the locking of argument. No reason, no conversation; no conversation, no argument; no argument, no civilization, Murray suggests…”

“Much like our own woeful Republic, the Roman Empire in late antiquity suffered from moral exhaustion and was beginning to show signs of its eventual collapse. Amidst that decay, St. Martin of Tours (c.336-397) embodied the Christian valor necessary to sustain and rebuild authentic Christian culture….”

“As Christians, we have a responsibility to build a distinct, living culture in the twenty-first century, just as our forebears had the same responsibility in their time, a culture which will manifest itself in education and humanitarian institutions. The crucial difference between our time and late antiquity, of course, is the socio-political status of Church. In Martin’s time, the Church came to enjoy official status and was able to command the deference of the imperial authority. In our age, the Church is increasingly under attack by a new, secular imperium which would strip the Church of her right to evangelize, educate, and minister. This new imperium is possessed of the same ferocious hostility that beset the Church in reign of the pagan emperors. In the face of this new, militant paganism, may God grant us the full measure of the Christian valor of Saint Martin of Tours..”

This is crazy. Every time I come here, or click open a news site, I see another headline to some article claiming that Romney and the GOP lost some big demographic of voters, mostly I keep seeing how they lost the women’s vote and the young vote. Bull&*^%. He lost the non-white vote, that’s it, nothing else, and he lost it BIG, period. When the non-white vote is taken out Romney won in all other demographics, he won the 18-29 year olds and every other age group, and YES, take out the non-white vote and he won amongst women voters by 14 percentage points, a margin we normally consider a landslide.